”The Extra Piece”: The Nature of Science

This lesson is designed to explicitly teach ideas about the nature of science. It contains no specific scientific content knowledge. This means that students can learn about the nature of science without having to understand new science content at the same time. Although it is reliable and durable, scientific knowledge is neither carved in stone nor perfect. Rather, it is subject to change in the light of new evidence or the new interpretation of existing evidence. Because of its tentative nature, we cannot claim “absolute truth” in science. The tentative nature of scientific knowledge also means that laws and theories may change.